Karen and I are in Goma now. Today we visited some of the IDP (Internally Displaced Persons--like refugees, they have been forced to flee from their home communities for fear of personal safety, but they are still in their country of origin) camps that MCC has work in. It was very encouraging to see this work. MCC has partnered with a Congolese NGO, an arm of the Congolese Council of Churches to help the IDP's have their own personal gardens, as well as a large community garden. Wednesday is the day that the whole community comes to work on the community garden. Several local agronomists have been hired to shepherd the community in their planting. Both of the gardens we saw today were thriving, with between 30-70 people working on them when we arrived. We were greeted with wonderful singing in Swahili and lots of smiles. It was really touching.
The IDP camps are about 2 hours away by car (probably less than 40 miles total). These rides were beautiful, and took us through the lava fields created by the volcanoes close by. I've included a far away and close-up shot of the most notorious one: Nyiragongo. It is smoking in both of these pictures.
This evening we had a very pleasant dinner with our coworker and then headed back to her place to hang out. Unfortunately, the power was out, so we left shortly after we got there. BUT, since the power was out, we thought to look up at the sky and noticed a red-orange glow coming from about 30 degrees up on the horizon. It was Nyiragongo.
Did I mention that this volcano has a liquid lava lake in the crater at the top? Well, it does, and on clear nights you can see the light emitted from the lava radiating off of the smoke which wafts up from that lake. In you haven't heard, it is VERY COOL to see a mountain glowing in the dark because of a liquid lava lake that is located inside of a crater at the top of the mountain. I highly recommend it if you have the opportunity.
I was quite thankful to see how God used a seeming bummer (no electricity) as an opportunity for a cool experience. Thanks Lord!
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DeleteI like it a lot!!! Volcanoes are so cool, and I love seeing amazing things at night time; there's something so awesome about the changing of the light that allows us to see things that we wouldn't be able to see when the sun is up. Truly amazing. And I just realized that volcanoes are ANOTHER thing that ya'll have in common with Hawaii - although I was never able to see the active one, but I did see a lot of lava rock, haha.
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